Seeing 448 tear off to the living room for the nearest blanket is a pretty good hint that something is wrong! Melody puts down her teacup. 

:Leareth?: 

No response. 

:Shory, do you have any idea what upset him? What were you doing just before this?: 

"I was saying that after he's comfortable with Blox he should pick up Niftyline next because it would suit his coding style!"

:...Yeah, no, I can't think of how that could possibly be something that would scare him! Er, it's not your fault, he gets panicky about a lot of random things. Let's just give him a couple of minutes: 

Leareth has not yet managed to find the wherewithal to interrupt 448's blanket-gathering mission, which is arguably an indication that he does not yet have the correct number of blankets piled on him. 

Blankets blankets blankets! Here's the last one!

It's probably very socially ungraceful to hide under the table with his enormous nest of every blanket in the house and then put his entire face on 448's fluff, but Leareth is going to do this anyway! 

:Sorry: he manages thirty seconds later. 

:You don't owe us an apology: Melody says on automatic. :Though, er, do you think you can manage to tell me what upset you, so we can avoid it?: 

Can he? This seems very hard. 

:Picture: Leareth manages after another thirty seconds of hiding. 

Melody has no idea what that could be referring to! Does Shory have any guesses? They should definitely get rid of the offending picture, whatever it was. 

"- there's an ad for a webcomic on here?" Shory says, peering at his screen. "With a picture. Of a castle?"

Melody tiptoes over and peers at it. :...Oh. I get why that would remind him of unpleasant past experiences. Er, is there a way to look at whatever those instructions are without also seeing the picture?: 

"Yeah, give me a minute." A minute later she has installed a browser extension that will replace images with their names or descriptions and allow you to click them to display them if you suspect them of containing something you want.

Neat! Shory is very good at laptop-related things and Melody is suitably impressed and grateful. 

After a few moments, she sits down on the floor so that she can actually see Leareth. :Hey. Is there anything I can get for you that would help?: 

Leareth is mostly hidden under blankets and still has his face buried in 448's neck ruff. :I think I will be all right in a few minutes: he tells them, shakily. :Sorry: 

:It's all right. Shory figured out how to hide pictures, so hopefully you won't run into more startling things: 

:Thank you: 

Melody will sit across from him until he's calm enough to emerge, at which point she goes to make him a cup of tea. 

Leareth tries to focus on the laptop screen again but he has absolutely no recollection of what he was doing when he left off. 

Shory can remind him insofar as they were on the same page to begin with.

Oh right. Leareth does not especially feel able to concentrate enough to experiment with this library, even though it is very neat. 

:You can tell me more about Niftyline if you want: he says to Shory. 

So Shory will explain again why she thinks Niftyline will better support his programmatic instincts, of which he has a surprising number for someone from a preindustrial fantasy world.

Leareth appreciates the compliment! (Yeah, he is...not going to get into the reasons why he has a number of instincts that seem to be surprisingly relevant and useful here.) He asks some clarifying questions about Niftyline, and then asks whether there are different schools of programming that teach different styles, and if so what the range is. He's still noticeably shaky and scattered for a few minutes, but eventually calms down and seems fully engaged again. 

Lots of people have different and sometimes very strongly held opinions! Shory tries not to get too many into her pedagogy, though she does have some.